Fiona MacDonald: works from the mirrored series 2009-2011

About

Since 2009 Fiona MacDonald has been making a series of paintings and sculptures that reference historical works of art. The paintings are based on significant sculptures, in a direct mirroring of the sculptures based on paintings, interrogating what happens in the translation of object to image and vice versa. The motion and superabundance of Baroque sculpture is in evidence in works based on Titian, Bernini and Tintoretto. The excessive or superabundant is a quality MacDonald has pursued in diverse ways over the years: how it tips into decay, how it relates to taste, how the decorative pushes up against the visceral. With the dissolving weight of silicone rubber in her sculptures, or thick sweeps and drips of oil paint, the weight of the work's materiality is deliciously present. The unfolding of events over time in variant perspectives is key; Rebecca Geldard notes the work's ‘curiously time-based energy, the tandem sense of growth and decomposition implying movement - the shudder in and out of technological fast-forward and rewind.' MacDonald's works have a sense of being still in formation — of being ‘caught in the act' of an ongoing process. Fiona MacDonald has recently been awarded the prestigious Abbey Fellowship in Painting and will be working for three months at the British School at Rome from October. In 2010 MacDonald made a duo exhibition with sculptor Phyllida Barlow at CoExist Gallery Southend, and with Berlin artist Anne Gathmann at Phoenix Gallery in Exeter. Here solo shows include Morphology, at Maddox Arts 2009, Anthropoflora at Long & Ryle 2007 and Habitat, at Phoenix Brighton, 2006. Curated by VJB arts Exhibition open Monday - Friday 8am-6pm For more details contact: vanessa@vanessabrady.com mail@fionamacdonald.co.uk